SBIR-STTR Award

The primary goal of this Phase I effort is to investigate, develop, and characterize a next generation class of high performance, high spectral resolution, compact LWIR hyperspectral imaging sensors enabled by a high throughput refractive relay design form. The optical properties of these systems, including light gathering capability, spectral resolution, optical distortion, and other parameters will be modeled and characterized, and estimates of performance metrics such as NESR will be predicted, and tradeoffs between data collection rates and performance will be evaluated.

The primary goal of this Phase II effort is to design, fabricate, and evaluate a high performance, high resolution, compact LWIR hyperspectral sensor that is enabled by a novel high throughput design form specifically designed to accommodate the large formats of recently advanced focal plane arrays. The optical properties of the prototype system, including radiometric performance, spectral resolution, smile and keystone distortion, and other system parameters will be measured and evaluated.